A. J. Dawson

“ After that, it is a moot point whether even Dick Vaughan's voice would have served to penetrate the cloud of fury in which Jan moved. He became very terrible in his wrath. One saw less of the bloodhound and more, far more, of his sire, of royal Finn, the fighting wolfhound of the Tinnaburra ranges, in his splendid pose, in the upward, scimitar curve of his great tail, the rage in his red-hawed eyes, the vibrant defiance of his baying roar.
But he lacked as yet his sire's inimitable fighting craft, just as he lacked entirely the lightning cunning of the half-wolf Sourdough. ”

“ Their play was not at all unlike that of human children. They loved to dig holes in the ground; to hide behind tree-trunks and spring out upon one another with terrifying cries and pretended fierceness; all kinds of make-believe appealed to them greatly, and to none of them more keenly than to Finn, who liked to come galloping down from the other end of the orchard to the old oak tree, flying exaggerated danger signals, and making believe that he was pursued by a savage and remorseless enemy.
Tara smiled broadly, and stretched out her fore-legs on the ground. ”

“ And there are folk who call modern life prosaic, dull, devoid of romance. Romance! Why, in the older lands there is hardly a foot of road space that has not been trodden at one time or another by youth or maid, in the crucial moment of setting out upon this amazing adventure. There are men and women who drum their fingers on a window-pane after breakfast of a morning, and yawn out their disgust at the empty dullness of life, the vacant boredom of another day. And within a mile of them, as like as not, some one is setting forth--lips compressed, brow knit--upon the great adventure. ”

“ When in his ravenous guzzling one dog's nose chanced to be thrust at all nearly to another's, there would arise a horrid sound of half-choked snarling; the fierce hissing rattle of snarls which came from flesh and blood-glutted jaws. Obeying instincts to the full as strong as any human passion which has ever gone to the making of tragedy, these working-dogs made a wild orgy of their feast. They wantoned and they wallowed in their perfectly natural gluttony. Having fed full and overfull, they desired more by reason of their long hunger for meat and the hard vigor of their lives. ”

“ The Wolfhound sprang completely over the wolf-dingo, and took a slashing bite at the creature's haunches as he descended. Then they rose one at the other, like bears standing erect, and meeting jaw to jaw in mid-air, with a flashing and clashing of fangs which sent a thrill of excitement along the line of watchful dingoes, who realized now that they were looking on at the greatest spectacle of their lives. Lupus missed his grip that time, but so did Finn, being unable to withstand the violent sidelong wrench which snatched the enemy's neck from his jaws. ”

“ It was the nostalgia of the wilderness, of the life of the wild; and, as he looked out into the moonlight, Finn saw again in fancy, the boundary-rider's lonely humpy, the rugged, rocky hills of the Tinnaburra; a fleeing wallaby in the distance, himself in hot pursuit. He smelt again the tang of crushed gum-leaves, and heard the fascinating rustle which tells of the movements of game, of live food, over desiccated twigs and leaves, in bush untrodden by human feet. ”

“ She sprang off at a tangent and, as she made her seventh or eighth bound, terror filled her heart almost to bursting, as a roaring grey cloud swept upon her from her right quarter, and she felt the burning thrust of Finn's fangs in her neck. She sat up valiantly to fight for her life and the young life in her pouch, and her left hind-leg, with its chisel claws, sawed the air like a pump-handle. The dingoes knew that it would be death, for one or two of them, at all events, to face those out-thrust chisels. ”

“ Will ye be men—or helots and outcasts? Will you choose Duty, and the favour of God's appointed way for us, of progress and of leadership; or will you choose—pleasure, swift decay, annihilation? Upon your heads be it! Our fathers nobly did their part. Upon your choice hangs the future of our race, the fate of your children, the destiny of God's chosen people, who have paltered with strange gods, blasphemed the true faith, and stepped aside from the white path—the Only Way: Duty! ”

“ Nature may be grand, inspiring, bracing, terrifying, what you will. She is never simply kind and loving--whatever the armchair poets may say. A countryside must be humanised, and that through many successive generations, before it can lay hold upon your heart by its loving-kindness, and draw moisture from your eyes. It is not the emotionless power of Nature, but man's long-suffering patient toil in Nature's realm that gives our English country-side this quality.
But my rugged, unkempt bush here is nobly serene and splendidly calm in the dawn hours. ”

“ The invasion was an act of sheer lawless brutality. No surrender could bind a people to submission in the face of such an outrage as that. The Germans must be driven out; the British people must rise and cast them out, and overthrow for ever their insolent dominion. But too many of the English people were—like myself! Well, they must learn; we must all learn; every able-bodied man must learn; for a blow had to be struck that should free England for ever. The country must be awakened to realization of that need. We owed so much to the brave ones who gave us England ”

“ Jan breathed like a bull as he resumed the defensive; and like a bull he lowered his head with a swaying motion as though to ease his labored breathing and drain his jaws of the spume that clogged them. He was bleeding now from more than a dozen wounds. The frost nipped those wounds stingingly. The hard trampled snow about his feet was flecked with blood and foam—his life-blood, his foam. Bill remained unscathed and to all seeming as coldly calculating as ever. ”

“ Vanished utterly for me were Dursley and its worthy folk, and Australia too for that matter. Practically all the books I read carried me to the Old World, and most often to England, which for me was rapidly becoming a synonym for romance, charm, interest, culture, and all the good things of which one dreams. Everything desirable, and not noticeable or recognised as being in my daily life, I grew gradually to think of as being part and parcel of English life. I did not as yet long to go to England. One does not long to visit the moon. ”

“ When full daylight came, Warrigal and her mates were closer in than ever; hidden in the scrub within forty paces of the man. Finn retained his old place, some five-and-thirty yards farther back, behind a bush. The crows preened their funereal plumage and waited, full of bright-eyed expectancy. Finn gnawed bitterly at his dry fragment of scrub root. The splendid pitiless sun climbed slowly clear of its bed on the horizon, thrusting up long, keen blades of heat and light to herald the coming of another blazing day in the long drought. ”

“ And so, while crushed and beaten London lay sleeping off its exhaustion, I slept under Constance Grey's roof, full of gratitude, and of a kind of new hope and gladness, very foreign, one would have said, to my gruesome experiences of the past forty-eight hours.
England, the old victorious island kingdom, bequeathed to us by Raleigh, Drake, Nelson; the nineteenth-century England of triumphant commercialism; England till then inviolate for a thousand years; rich and powerful beyond all other lands; broken now under the invader's heel—that ancient England slept. ”

“ Another moment and Desdemona had forced her way past Finn, baying hoarsely, and was inside the cave. There followed a yowling, snarling cry, a scuffling sound, and a big red fox emerged, low to the ground like a cat, his brush between his legs, fight in his bared jaws, and flight in his red rolling eyes. But fate had knocked at Reynard's door, and would not be denied. His running did not carry him far. It is probably somewhat disturbing to be rooted out of one's own particular sanctuary by a baying bloodhound. ”

“ In the same instant almost, the fox was on his feet, but before he could leap away, Finn's jaws descended on the back of his neck, gripping him like a vice, and shaking him almost as a terrier shakes a rat. With a desperate squirm the fox wriggled earthward from this terrible grip, and, as Finn drew breath, stabbing at the fox with one fore-paw, as he would have stabbed at a still living rabbit, to hold it, Reynard's fangs cut deeply into the loose skin of his chest. ”

“ Who should know better than I, that if my life-long mental restlessness chances, when I am less well than usual, or darkness is upon me, to take the form of nostalgia, with clinging, pulling thoughts of England--never of the London I knew so well, but always of the rural England I knew so little, from actual personal experience, yet loved so well--who should know better than I (sinning against the light in the writing of this unpardonably involved sentence) that such restlessness, such nostalgia, are no more based upon reason than is a bilious headache. ”

“ III INTRODUCING THE LADY DESDEMONA
April was uniformly dull and wet that year, but May seemed to bring full summer in her train; and it was on the morning of the third of May that Finn went to Shaws with the Nuthill house party.
The turf of the Downs was so springy on this morning that one felt uplifted by it in walking. Each separate blade of the clover-scented carpet seemed surcharged with young life. The downland air was as a tonic wine to every creature that breathed it. ”

“ If I am certain of anything in this world, I am certain that the pursuit of pleasure never yet brought real happiness to any intelligent human being, and never will. True, I have met some happy people in London, even now, when England lies wounded from a cruel blow—a blow which I believe may prove the greatest blessing England ever knew. But those happy people are not running after pleasure or concentrating their intelligence upon their own gratification. No, no; those happy people are strenuously, soberly striving to do the whole of their duty as Christians and British citizens. ”

“ Any man of discernment should be well content here to bide. The air about me is full of a nimble sweetness, and as utterly free from impurity as the air one breathes in mid-ocean. More, it is impregnated by the tonic perfumes of all the myriad aromatic growths that surround my cottage. Men say the Australian bush is singularly soulless; starkly devoid of the elements of interest and romance which so strongly endear to the hearts of those dwelling there the countryside in such Old World lands as the England of my birth. ”